lumberjack vest.

i maybe have a slight case of the sewing bug. ever since the tiny backpack, i can't seem to control myself. i'm super excited about my latest make.

it's a tiny lumberjack vest! and i sewed it with my own two hands! (oh, and that sewing machine thing.) and what's even more awesome is that i made it from scratch, without a pattern, like a magician! a sewing magician!

it was thrilling. the whole time i was pretty sure i was going to end up with a useless pile of flannel and sherpa. but, somehow, in the end, i ended up with something that is actually wearable. and pretty freaking adorable.

i based my 'pattern' (if you can even call it that) for the front an back pieces off of margot's coat. then there was a lot of head scratching and bad math to figure out how to create all of the various pieces.

and this is what i came out with, a confusing pile of made by me news print pattern pieces. since i'm a glutton for punishment, i decided to add piping to the front and back. this made for roughly twice as many pieces, since the lining had to have a separate pattern. the piping was almost my demise with this vest, but i couldn't help myself. it just adds so much awesomeness.

the construction was like putting together a three-d puzzle (one of my favorite childhood activities). i relied heavily on these two tutorials to figure out the order of operations for everything. i still can't believe i ended up with something that actually looks like clothes.

for the flannel i used a thrifted men's shirt. about halfway through, i was really regretting the flannel. i didn't pay enough attention to pattern matching, and the misalignments were kind of driving me batty. the mess was made even worse by the piping, which also didn't line up right on the first try. i ended up remaking one of the front panels, which corrected the worst of the alignment problems and kept me from throwing the whole project in the bin. the misalignments are also much less noticeable when it's being worn by a super cute tiny lumberjack poking a wicker rabbit in the eye (she's super into poking things in the eye right now).

the vest is super warm, for all of the lumberjacking margot will be doing in it. the outside layer is quilted with some polyester batting and then it's lined with some sherpa-y fabric. cozy. 

the back shot still makes me cringe a bit. oh pattern matching woes. i made sure the vertical red strip ran straight down the middle, but i guess because it's old flannel, it's not square. so even though the red stripe is where i wanted it, the horizontal stripes are not horizontal. the addition of the piping makes that fact super obvious. and since i harvest a shirt for the fabric, i didn't have enough to redo it. live and learn.

margot doesn't seem to care about these silly problems. she is mostly concerned with adventuring, and the vest is perfect for adventuring. so far it's climbed that foot stool, explored the science center, pet a goat, and gone down the slide roughly eight hundred twenty seven times at the park. 

so, there you go. i made a vest. i still can't believe it--a real piece of clothing with a zipper and everything. i kind of want to make another one, just to be sure it wasn't a fluke. i also kind of want to add a hood and some pockets. soooo, if you're interested in making one, let me know. i can try again and try to make a sewing tutorial (it'll probably be terrible and impossible to follow, so you've been warned). or we can skip all of that and you could just wing it too, and let me know how it goes. i feel like it will be awesome. happy sewing!